Free Desktop Planetariums
By Patrick Norton - Posted Jan 28, 2004
- Celestia, available at SourceForge.net and Shatters.net
Ever want to zip though space? Celestia lets you take a drive through an OpenGL model of a healthy chunk of the universe, and a darn gorgeous one at that. Just look at the stills!
- Stellarium
I stink at finding constellations in the night sky. Stellarium promises to fix that. Choose your home location and Stellarium renders 3-D photorealistic skies in real time with OpenGL. If the sun hasn't set yet, you'll get a blue sky. You can click a button and get constellations overlaid on the night sky, along with stars, planets, and nebulae. Very cool, very free. It's still in beta, which means it's not quite ready for prime time (hit Esc to turn it off), but I think it's well worth downloading and firing up.
- Adastra Freestar, available at Cnet Download.com
Although Stellarium looks like it renders a crisp view from your backyard, Adastra Freestar delivers a more traditional star map, sans the rendered atmosphere and other 3-D gimcrackery. It's designed for use in real time, it offers live tracking, and it can give you a view of the night sky from any location on any date. Enter the dates you'll be in Montana and print out a map to take with you. And it's all freeeeeee.
- Xearth
Looking for something a tad more passive? How about a simple desktop that displays a view of Earth from space, shaded for the position of the sun? Xearth, a Unix classic, has been ported to a ton of platforms. Xplanet offers a particularly real-looking image of Earth. You can get the regular Xearth and a few Windows ports from the Xearth site.
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